Decolonial Approach Research Articles

Defamiliarization in advancing a decolonial approach to global citizenship education

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to investigate whether defamiliarization used in schools by some preservice teachers during their teaching practice can be considered an appropriate decolonizing pedagogical practice for advancing global citizenship education (GCE). The research used a case study design, with data collected in the form of reflection essays from 11 preservice teachers during their teaching practice period. The findings indicate that the specific defamiliarization practice used by these teachers aided both them and their students, through a reflective and collaborative process, in recognizing and critiquing the hierarchical knowledge paradigm in the current school curriculum and consciously resisting epistemic violence. The defamiliarization practice increased participants’ self-reflexivity and served as a pedagogy of dissensus. This is a novel study in that it accounts for the perceived benefits of defamiliarization in advancing certain aspects of critical GCE from the Global South.

The African Union’s Silencing the Guns: between stereotyping and owning gender roles

Following the motto “African Solutions for African Problems”, the African Union (AU) fosters its agency as a regional actor on gender policies. The Silencing the Guns campaign represents one example. Here, the AU attempts to link gender, peace and security policies. Taking the AU’s motto into account, this research explores to what degree Silencing the Guns is driven by the understanding of gender roles linked to African Feminisms, and to what degree gender assumptions of other feminist traditions are embedded. With the help of hypervisibility as a concept, stereotypes will be put into the context of Silencing the Guns. To answer the research question, a mixed-methods approach is applied for data collection. The results clearly indicate references to African feminist theories such as Womanism. In particular, these results help introduce a discussion around epistemological power hierarchies in feminist discourse defining what (harmful) gender stereotypes are for whom. Although there is a common understanding among most of the feminist researchers that gender is a social construct influenced by socio-cultural contexts, the socio-cultural context of the Global North seems to be the universal departure point to investigate gender stereotypes. However, leaving out the various socio-cultural contexts in the Global South that shape gender as a social construct distorts the knowledge about how gender stereotypes function in different societies. Consequently, the main output of this research is a call to rethink the universal claim on how gender stereotypes are defined and interpreted and to urgently encounter multiple decolonial approaches of epistemology, methodology and ontology.

Decolonising Disability in Contexts of Illiberalism and Social Abandonment: The Case for a Double-Edged Critique from the Postsocialist Margins

This paper explores the relevance of the decolonial approach for analyses of postsocialist disablement, taking as its test case the analytical tool of the ‘postsocialist disability matrix’. The question we pose is how much decolonial critique can the analyses of postsocialist disablement embrace without becoming reactionary amidst growing illiberalism and social abandonment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? We provide an overview of postsocialist illiberalism, assess critically some central arguments in decolonial disability studies and outline the production of ‘southern bodies/minds’ as a key feature of social abandonment in CEE. We conclude that decolonising disability in the postsocialist region needs to go beyond the North versus South binary to account for the specific experiences of disabled people inhabiting the ‘poor North’. Given these considerations, the double-edged critique implied in the original formulation of the ‘postsocialist disability matrix’ as scepticism towards both the state and the market could also help embrace the decolonising imperative while remaining sceptical towards both Northern and Southern theory production in disability studies.

Discours rap-portés : analyse médiologique de l’interaction entre rap et littérature

Discours <i>rap-portés</i> : analyse médiologique de l’interaction entre rap et littérature

The Practice of Decolonizing Migration Studies

Decolonizing thought, a useful effort for academics committed to social justice and equity, requires examining the colonial and imperial premises undergirding scholarship and teaching. I explain what I think it takes to develop a decolonial approach to migration studies, offer examples from in my own career, and end with some suggestions for scholars interested in decolonizing migration studies.

Decolonizing Migration Studies: A Du Boisian/Decolonial Perspective1

This essay addresses my current thinking on the question of the decolonization of the sociology of migration. Coloniality in knowledge production means that knowledge systems are founded in the ways of seeing created by colonialism. To decolonize a field means to think beyond these ways of seeing. This essay first identifies the key ways through which coloniality is expressed in the sociology of migration and then it presents an alternative decolonial approach based on the sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois. I show how this approach may reshape the field by a critical examination of my own work.

Seeking utopia: Psychologies'waves toward decoloniality.

This paper provides a review of empirical studies published with a decolonial epistemic approach in psychology. Our goal was to better understand how decolonial approaches are being practiced empirically in psychology, with an emphasis on community-social psychology. We first discuss the context of colonization and coloniality in the research process as orienting information. We identified 17 peer-reviewed empirical articles with a decolonial approach to psychology scholarship and discerned four waves that characterize the articles: relationally-based research to transgress fixed hierarchies and unsettle power, research from the heart, sociohistorical intersectional consciousness, and desire-based future-oriented research to rehumanize and seek utopia. Community-social psychology research with a decolonial approach has the potential to remember grassroots efforts, decolonizing our world.

The Transimmanence of the Real: Ontological Pluralism in the School of Ibn ʻArabī

This paper studies the concept of “ontological pluralism”, developed by Heidegger scholar Iain Thomson, in relation to the waḥdat al-wujūd framework of Ibn ʻArabī’s school. Heidegger’s ontological difference between being and entities, and the definition of being in excess of any particular entitative determination, calls for an ethic of pluralism and acceptance of the myriad ways in which being is encountered and understood. In my paper, this pluralism—and its conceptual foundation on the meaning and reality of being—is developed further through Ibn ʻArabī’s complex distinction and interpenetration between the Real’s transcendence (tanzīh) and immanence (tashbīh). The pluralistic and polysemic possibilities of this Akbarian “transimmanence” is compared with Heideggerian ontological pluralism, using Milad Milani’s recent Heideggerian approach to the study of Sufism. This comparison asks if elements of a robust pluralism cannot be found in an avowedly premodern metaphysical framework like that of Ibn ʻArabī, thereby attempting to trouble the uniqueness of the critical breaks in the history of modern Western thought. An attempt to develop a decolonial approach to the study of pluralism sees waḥdat al-wujūd and its later development not just as an object of historical analysis but as a theoretical framework that can positively inform our political and ethical concerns. This is why this paper brings together Heideggerian and Akbarian approaches to pluralism in their own terms. This combined conceptual framework is then used to bring to light the Akbarian pluralism in the life, death, and writings of subcontinental Sufis like Dārā Shikōh and Sarmad Kāshānī.

Critical consciousness from a Palestinian feminist, decolonial perspective: A collective exploratory inquiry

To date, many studies have documented the devastating impact of the Israeli military occupation in Palestine, which deprives Palestinians of all basic and human rights. Yet, the interlocking oppressions that characterize the Israeli occupation—as those of other colonial systems—are mostly overlooked, with little attention being devoted in mainstream literature to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality within the colonial project. With a perspective informed by intersectional feminist studies, decolonial approaches, and liberation psychology, we explored how women in Palestine resist and struggle against the colonial and patriarchal powers present in their lives and, in particular, the role of feminist critical consciousness in this process. Through 21 research-discussions with Palestinian and international but Palestine-experienced feminist activists and researchers, we explored how the concept of critical consciousness (CC) was perceived and encountered within their experiences in the Palestinian context. CC was explored in its two dimensions (critical reflection and critical action), and its liberating power was discussed. This study contributes to a growing body of literature on the relationship between CC and resistance, and their shared impacts on women's liberation and well-being within contexts of settler-colonialism. Implications for research, policies, and clinical practices are discussed.

The Russian imperial education system in the decolonial perspective

Introduction. Nowadays we are witnessing a movement from values imposed on the whole world by Western civilization to values that correlate with the values of local communities. In this regard, it makes important to consider education policy, which had a great impact on the culture of colonized peoples, in accordance with the principle of historicism, as a fundamental way of understanding past events, taking into account the historical particularities of the past.Purpose setting. Using the history of colonial education in Russia as an example, author examines its impact on the colonized peoples.Methodology and methods of the study. The methods and methodology of the study are represented by the decolonial approach developed by W. Mignolo. The object of this study is the philosophy of education. The subject of the research is the coloniality in the Russian educational system.Results. Based on the theory of decolonization, author examines coloniality and its origins in the Russian educational system, referring to the history of development and formation of colonial education in Russia. Author emphasizes the Russian Empire's policy towards «gentiles», which focused on education as a method of colonization, and believes that public education in the Soviet Union is a continuation of this policy.Conclusion. Author concludes that the time for educational paradigms with colonial objectives has passed, and that it is now necessary to enable the development of new educational systems whose origins we can see using the decolonial approach. Author argues that a decolonial approach will open up new ways of learning, as opposed to the Western system of learning which has been broadcast around the world as the only true system.

Turismo na Montanha de Texcoco: Um olhar desde as Resistências Descoloniais

This manuscript seeks to test the concept of decolonial tourism from the hybridization of genres that are woven between theory and empirical evidence. For this, a solid abstract reflection on the decolonial approach is used and it is developed from a paradoxical nuance with the tourist activity, with the objective of identifying the influence of alternative visions of the world and sentiments regarding other forms of tourism. It is possible to affirm the emergence of alternative tourist proposals, founded based on a critical and social conscience, anchored to solidarity economic models and with new intersections between nature and culture, which could constitute an emerging paradigm on new ways of taking advantage of free time and more specifically to do tourism. Aspect that became evident in the face of the forms of proximity displacement that benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic. Through exploratory research of an inductive nature, the empirical experience of three groups was recovered, which served as a point of reference to go back and forth between theory and reality, for the conformation of this essay. It is concluded that these new ways of doing tourism are based on a biocentric perspective, related to ancestral knowledge transmitted intergenerationally and carved in the interface between nature and culture. It is argued that these trends could define new ways of conceiving tourism in the 21st century.

The promise of agency in the narrative productions methodology. Thinking through decolonial feminisms

ABSTRACT The Narrative Productions Methodology (NPM) is a methodological tool grounded in feminist epistemologies, particularly in situated knowledges. In the NPM, a Narrative is co-created between researcher and participant, which has raised interest in many researchers and participants alike. The possibility to modify the text as they wish is an effort to foster participants’ agency. However, the promise of agency is undelivered. Throughout the article, a feminist decolonial approach is used to understand how colonial difference affects communication between researcher and participant. The privileging of gender as the site of subordination in feminist epistemologies is also questioned in the article and linked to the NPM. Finally, the aporia of hospitality is brought into the conversation to discuss how researcher and participant relate to each other in the NPM. This allows for deepening into the effects of the colonial matrix of power in the NPM and, thus, the problem with participants’ agency.

CSR in Very Small Entities and Small Enterprises in the African Context: Overview and Modeling

In line with the criticisms put forward in postcolonial and decolonial approaches, the literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Africa is marked by the absence of a CSR model that truly reflects the deployment of very small entities and small enterprises (VSESEs) on the continent. The purpose of this contribution is therefore to identify a CSR model based on the detailed entrepreneurial realities of VSESEs in an African context. Through observation of the practices of 12 Cameroonian VSESEs and the testimonials of their promoters, it appears that CSR in these small entities comes in three dimensions, depending on the target community: genealogical responsibility towards blood relations, geographic responsibility towards the local community, and spiritual responsibility towards those sharing the same beliefs. Each of these dimensions is characterized by underlying conciliation mechanisms, actions and practices, and distinct stakeholders.

Southern Perspectives on Border Criminology

In this special issue, we explore the limits of existing theories for understanding migration governance from a Southern perspective and what the potential for rethinking border controls and their study, such as alternative epistemological and methodological approaches, might engender. We invited contributions to imagine what a ‘Southern perspective’ on the field of border criminologies would look like. In other words, what does it entail to study and theorise border control from the South? We organised a panel at the European Society of Criminology in September 2021 and then invited further authors. We sought to engage multiple disciplinary traditions and diverse case studies that speak to the various disciplinary perspectives and geopolitical dimensions of bordering. Many of the authors in this special issue are early career researchers who, through engaging with postcolonial theory and decolonial approaches, are fostering novel perspectives within border criminologies. Collectively, the articles bring together the different geopolitical, sociocultural and economic ways in which borders in the Global South are imagined, constructed, negotiated and reconstructed. The articles offer a wide range of epistemological and methodological insights for border criminologies to engage with, shifting our understanding from Northern perspectives.

Territorial healing: A spatial spiral weaving transformative reparation

This article introduces the concept of territorial healing as a strategy for holistic intervention with communities affected by violence-related trauma. Violence exerted in places generates affective and territorial ruptures contained in socio-emotional wounds and disruptions in the social and institutional fabric that weakens collective life. Building on post/in-conflict cities studies, peacebuilding studies, and a decolonial approach, we argue that territorial healing agglutinates myriad interventions aimed at a collective restorative reparation of geo-traumas (Pain, 2021) and promotes the construction of collective subjects for decision-making in territorial processes. The article highlights the need to go beyond the local/spatial turn of peacebuilding and reparative planning by providing a more robust understanding of how to frame the political project of reparative justice in urban spaces and across different scales. Territorial healing processes go beyond institutionalized frameworks to involve decentralized and autonomous processes that expand the spatiality of the symbolic, corporeal and emotions of collective urban life. This article suggests that a territorial healing trajectory requires weaving the mapping of body-territory-earth (Cabnal, 2019), collective memory, and spatial imagination as a strategy to manage existing conflicts through therapeutic dialogue and the shaping of reparative infrastructures.

Fraught subjects: decolonial approaches to racialized international students as “settlers of colour in the making”

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to migration studies, settler colonial studies and critical internationalization studies by mapping as connected two concurrent settler colonial preoccupations, reconciliation and internationalization. In Canada, as in other Western countries, international students are a crucial resource as they increasingly sustain post-secondary funding. At the same time, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) has charged the educational sector to put reconciliation and decolonization at the heart of their mandate. Drawing on interviews with racialized international students in Ontario, Canada, this paper examines how racialized international students may have complex relationships to coloniality and be complicit in legitimating settler colonialism. We argue that the processes of reconciliation and internationalization must be understood as deeply interconnected especially because the obfuscation of coloniality is a key technology of settler rule.

Why does political representation of the marginalised matter? Teaching classic literature using intersectional and decolonial approaches

Political theorists and scientists have published extensive scholarship on the political representation of the marginalised. Some notable and widely cited scholars include Jane Mansbridge, Anne Phillips, Iris M. Young, Suzanne Dovi, and Melissa Williams. They have mostly focused on the importance of representation of women and argue that such representation enhances the functioning of representative democracies. This strand of literature has made significant contributions to contemporary research, especially on studies showing how and why political representation matters. Underdiscussed, nonetheless, is how such classic studies should be taught in a classroom in the context of global movements, namely #BlackLivesMatter, #StopAsianHate, and #MeToo, where various marginalised identities intersect when subjected to oppression. We contest and strengthen some of these ideas in extant scholarship promoting diversity politics by taking intersectional and decolonial approaches. We advocate for prioritising intersectionality over diversity and for decolonising teaching political representation by centring the feminist works of BIPOC and Global South scholars. By challenging both the absence of minoritised women as political actors as well as scholars—as a matter of the production of knowledge and as political activism—we create an inclusive learning environment. We enable both the educators and students to reflect on their positionalities and furthermore achieve the long-term goal of equality in the classrooms, political institutions, and beyond.

Disrupting Whiteness as Higher Education: Towards a Systemic Decoloniality

This creative conceptual paper expands traditionalised academic approaches through integrated narratives, plays, lyrics, and poetry as decolonial method. Based in first person narratives, informal interviews, artistic expression, and music-integration, the author clarifies tensions in decolonial strategy, including moving beyond racial representation to acknowledge and respond to racialised poverty, racism built into the fabric of higher education, and an overarching denial of racial disparities. The paper begins with a discussion of the student-created and produced play, The Fall, which brings the #RhodesMustFall movement onto the stage. Integrating student discussions and reactions to the play, the paper echoes themes from The Fall, suggesting that strategies which interrupt coloniality, while necessary, are insufficient to transform from formal education’s capitalistic and exploitative foundation. In centring USA and South African writers, the paper highlights that the purpose of education remains a White supremacist vision and that to move from such anti-Black infrastructures, transformation must align directly with ongoing, student-led decolonial approaches. The paper then parallels higher education protests to the context of the 2010 World Cup’s artistic exploitation of South Africa, warning of the power of appropriation, especially on a global stage. The paper concludes with the affirmation that creative, artistic, and Black-centric voices must be fostered and integrated into decolonial strategies to transform the global Whiteness of higher education.

Gathering our medicine: strengthening and healing kinship and community

This article considers the terms culture and healing, critiques perpetuation of colonizing perspectives in conventional trauma-informed mental health approaches, and introduces Gathering Our Medicine, an innovative community framework created by Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish; Coast Salish Peoples Indigenous to the lands of Southern British Columbia, Canada) practitioner Denise Findlay in response to the need for decolonial approaches to mental health for Indigenous communities throughout British Columbia, Canada. The framework encourages re-imagining healing and mental health practices through values such as lateral kindness that draw from distinct traditional Indigenous philosophies, ontologies, and epistemologies. By revitalizing and centring distinctive traditional knowledges about actualization, transformation, and healing, the framework provides a role for allies that disrupts the impulse to deny culpability that Indigenous scholar Susan Dion calls the perfect stranger position. Findlay provides an alternative—the imperfect friend—drawing on kinship practices as effective indirect praxis for collective healing and well-being, transforming the distanced expert into engaged community member.

Tackling Environmental and Epistemic Injustice: Decolonial Approaches for Pluriversal Peacebuilding in South Africa

The paper highlights environmental injustices in South Africa as well as the accompanying continuation of mega-extraction-based violence. In doing so, the paper examines how the history of environmental injustices has left its mark in various parts of this country, where industrialization practices and policies from the apartheid era lead to environmental degradation that disproportionately impacts black people. This exemplifies how epistemic injustice occurs when dominant structures in knowledge production eliminate and silence the epistemic integrity of the sufferers, as well as how their contributions to the environmental knowledge system have been undermined, misinterpreted, and curtailed in discursive practices. In this context, the paper explores how a decolonial ecological turn and practices in South Africa can integrate environmental and development policies for sustainability and pluriversal peacebuilding.